PTCC Archive

30 January 2007

Dear Friends,

A belated Happy New Year to you all!

The new legislative session is upon us and our first battle will be for
the defeat of Act 1, the bogus school property tax “relief”
bill passed by the legislature last year. Ten percent of the local school
tax study commissions that were mandated by this law have returned “no
recommendation” responses to their school boards after they discovered
that this tax shift scheme has far more disadvantages than benefits for
Pennsylvania taxpayers and, in many instances, will result in HIGHER taxes
for the average homeowner. Many of the commissions that did offer a recommendation
did so reluctantly and with comments advising taxpayers to defeat the
recommendation in the May referendum.

The Pennsylvania Coalition of Taxpayer Associations has already started
an informational campaign to defeat the tax shift referendum in the May
primaries in the hope of sending a message to the legislature that this
phony property tax “relief” plan is unacceptable and that
school property tax ELIMINATION is the only satisfactory solution. You’ll
be receiving more information in future PTCC updates about what you can
do to help to defeat this law. In the meantime, PLEASE read this excellent
newspaper piece from the January 17 issue of the Bucks County Intelligencer
where Harrisburg correspondent Alison Hawkes fired the first salvo for
us. Click here
to read.

But now the primary reason for this update:

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** ACTION ITEM **

A former Washington lobbyist who is a PTCC subscriber has graciously
offered a few suggestions to make our efforts more effective. I’ll
be passing these along over the next few months but, for right now, I’m
asking all of you to help with a very simple first step that he recommended.

He told me that having large numbers of supporters is extremely important
when demanding legislative action, so it will help if we can expand the
number of PTCC subscribers. Please forward this e-mail to two friends
(or many more, if you wish!) with a short personal note encouraging them
to subscribe to help our efforts for school property tax elimination.
Ask them to visit the PTCC website for more information and to try the
Act 1 calculator to see the oppressive effect of this legislation on their
taxes. If each of you can bring just two more subscribers into the fold
we can triple our membership overnight! Simply have them send an e-mail
to pataxpayers@gmail.com to
join. PLEASE help with this Action Item!

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As usual, your comments, concerns, and suggestions are always invited.
Just send an e-mail to pataxpayers@gmail.com
and we’ll give you a prompt response.